Randy Kehler & Betsy Corner: Let’s keep our focus on positive changes

Physicists tell us that the world, and everything and everyone in it, is constantly changing.

It’s easy to see some of the ways the world, including our own country, seems to be changing for the worse — politically, economically, environmentally.

What’s less easy to see are the ways in which the world is changing for the better. Foremost among these is the rapidly evolving consciousness, or awareness, of people all around the globe, precisely as a result of these worsening conditions.

It’s an awareness that not only is everything changing, but that, as modern scientists also attest, everything is connected, everything is interdependent, nothing is separate. This means that everything we do affects everything and everyone else, including ourselves. Our chickens do come home to roost, what goes around does come around, we do reap what we sow.

Perhaps as a result of this “new” (yet very old) awareness of our essential connectedness, increasing numbers of people are becoming motivated less by what we fear — e.g., unseen “enemies” — and more by what we love: this beautiful earth and all its creatures, including our own children, families and friends. In fact, we are coming to realize that it’s fear itself that has led to many of the counter-productive, self-defeating actions that have precipitated the crises we face.

The passing of Tax Day April 15 should remind us of one such fear-based action, and its wasteful, destructive consequences: the federal government’s annual expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars for war (roughly equal to the military expenditures of all other countries combined). Imagine what might happen if enough of us, acting on our open-hearted consciousness of this fact, decided to withhold a portion of our federal taxes each year until this terribly misguided practice ended.

No doubt it would be a very positive step toward a safer, more livable world for everyone.